BCAT News

The following is a letter to the editor and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of BNEWS. 

I have been largely apolitical until now, but I’ve become interested in the discussion regarding the potential new Burlington High School. I try to maintain independence from taking sides in general and I advocate for always evaluating both sides of every argument. I have a freshman son in BHS and a daughter who was in Kindergarten during COVID.

In my opinion, building a new school should simply not be a controversial topic. Schools represent the absolute foundation from which our future generations will grow, and a new school provides the community an opportunity to pull itself up by the bootstraps and improve. Community members with children in the system would benefit directly, and members without children would still benefit indirectly. Teachers’ morale would improve, homeowners valuations would increase, commercial efforts would become more supported, and the town’s stature would generally rise. Investing in our youth is not only vitally important, it should be our first priority, as everything else follows from quality education. The cost should be entirely secondary to the need.

Therefore, there is only one relevant question to me: is there a proper need?
On this point, we seem to all agree. Every educator says that Burlington Needs a new high school. Each student walking those halls knows it first-hand. Administrators know it and faculty knows it. All it took for me to learn this was a stroll from the History wing to the English wing during parent teacher conferences, while still needing student help to decipher the classroom layout. The hardware is end-of-life, the building is not handicap accessible, and even the ceilings are leaking. It’s time. Delaying introduces risk for our children, which should be unacceptable. Again, I think we all know this.
The Need is so self-evident and universally agreed upon locally that the town has asked unsuccessfully for state funding for 13 straight years. The town has also set aside time and money to form a Building Committee (separate from the School Committee) to carefully and transparently prepare options and a resulting cost-effective plan. They analyzed the problem in detail, listened to anyone who was paying attention, and narrowed down to one solution which has universal support amongst government.

There seems to me only one logical response to all of this: YES!
Now I see signs around town bearing a message of (in reverse order): Wrong Plan, Wrong Time, No New Taxes.

The most relevant and important argument is ironically listed last on the sign, so I’ll discuss it first. Burlington should absolutely make sure we have a great plan for a new high school. That’s what the Building Committee did for over 2 years, investigating all possible options at a snail’s pace. Most alternatives casually being debated online today were already found to be invalid or unfeasible. This resulting plan therefore has a high probability of being the best possible plan (emphasis on possible). Regardless, let’s assume that it is the wrong plan. I would argue that any plan, even a wrong plan from 2025, is superior to current conditions at BHS, or must I remind us of the Need. But more importantly, in order for someone to convincingly claim “wrong plan,” logic requires concrete examples of where it went wrong, with a supporting argument that has actual consensus. So far, I have seen none of this, and I can therefore conclude that this can’t be so wrong a plan after all.

The wrong time argument is admittedly the most persuasive to me. I actually do believe we could save on costs if we wait for our current U.S. Administration’s tariff experiment to subside. Maybe it could cost less in a few years, who really knows? I also really do believe that the state will eventually help fund this high school, and maybe asking a 14th, 15th, or 16th time could actually work. Who knows? Our most repeated definition of insanity pops into my mind. Maybe we do have too many building projects running at once, and waiting could ease the burden a bit, or maybe not, who knows? However, I simply must remind us of the Need. We have already established that we can’t wait any longer. Do not let uncertainty and doubt rob our town of such collective generational benefits solely because we might save a few bucks one day. How can the time be wrong if the agreed-upon Need is so urgent? One can’t have it both ways.

Now to the final argument: No New Taxes. I have a strong suspicion this is the only actual argument, especially since it’s listed first on the signs. The website claims this is not the case in the small print.

Imagine for a moment that this new high school is free of charge, arriving at no cost to anyone at all. Is this still the wrong time? Is this still a wrong plan? Would anyone object at all? I highly suspect not. I highly suspect few would even care.

Now imagine that the state came through in year 13 and finally offered funding with an incredibly liberal 25% slice of the cost. Our tax burden is now a quarter less. Should we still say the time is wrong and risk waiting again? Should we still say the plan is wrong and go back to the drawing board? I imagine many of those same people not objecting to a free school would find a way to object here.

Let’s imagine one more thing: suppose every single person in town assembled and agreed upon a plan and a timeframe for this new school. Because any new school of this size requires substantial funding, most of which comes from property taxes, a debt exclusion vote would absolutely still be required. Would those same people who agreed on the plan and the timeframe go ahead and accept this new tax? Something tells me they would not.
These laughable hypotheticals illustrate a strong logical point: the only real reason to object here is because of cost. The other arguments are listed to make a No vote appear thoughtful. This is a perfectly valid argument to use, however it implies a fundamental belief that I do not share in this case: Need must be secondary to cost. When it comes to most things, I might actually agree. But when it comes to education, I strongly disagree. Some things need to be done regardless of cost, and this high school is demonstrably one of them.

I find it embarrassing that our XC (Cross Country) team practices around town in front of these No signs. They are all witnessing strong town opposition against their own progress, against their own investment, with large negative words implying that they are not worth any cost. They see the splintering amongst their parents over what should be a non-controversial topic. I find this opposition to such an overwhelming Need entirely unfounded and demoralizing. Let’s instead send a message to our kids that they are worth whatever it takes.

I urge Burlington to vote YES for the debt exclusion on November 15th.

AJ Ferrigno